Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Gilbert Interviews Author, Ewart Rouse

I love being a member of the South
Jersey Writers’ Group. Our group provides opportunities and inspiration for all
members to reach their goals. Everyone has a story to tell and if you check out
our blog, you will learn how many of the members got started down that road to
publication. Our group is blessed with many talented people and I was happy to
have this chance to interview Ewart Rouse on his books and on his love of
Cricket.

Gilbert:
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your days as a reporter in
Trinidad and here in the states. Did you always want to be a reporter?

Ewart Rouse:I grew
up in Trinidad back when it was under British rule. Because there were few
local authors at the time, we studied primarily British and American literature
in school. I decided I wanted to be a reporter after it struck me that many of
my favorite authors —
including Dickens, Steinbeck, and
Hemingway –—
were journalists.

There are no journalism schools on the island. Fortunately, the Guardian, the major daily newspaper, ran
a training program for would-be journalists who, if they cut mustard, were
offered jobs. I applied and was accepted into the program. After three months
of following the beat reporters around, attending formal classes that they
taught in the newspaper’s library, and covering stories, I made the cut. I was
given the court beat, and soon was covering politics, the top beat, at a time
of great political upheaval with the island seeking its independence from
Britain.

With that background, I landed a reporting job with the Associated
Press in New York when I migrated to the United States in the 1970s. After brief
stints in the wire service’s bureaus in Newark, Atlantic City and Washington
(the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon’s resignation and Gerald Ford’s
swearing in as President was brewing then), I joined the staff at the Philadelphia Inquirer. I worked at the Inky for three decades, primarily as a
business writer, retiring as a suburban editor in the paper’s Cherry Hill
bureau a few years ago. While at the Inquirer,
I also taught newswriting as an adjunct journalism professor at Arcadia,
Temple, Rutgers and Rowan Universities.

Gilbert: Ewart, your books are about cricket
and the men who play this game. Would you explain the dynamics of the game and
what attracted you to it? How long have you been playing? Can women play, too?

Ewart Rouse: First, a little history: my series of “Sticky
Wicket” novels originally were published by LMH Publishing. I acquired the
rights back to the books and now have republished them, with new covers and
material, through CreateSpace. Each volume is part of the same story, but can
stand on its own.

Now, they aren’t sports books, but rather novels about immigrants
from countries where cricket is the national sport — India, Pakistan, the West Indies islands,
England, etcetera —
who yearn to play the game of their youth in their adopted land. It’s a
humorous look at a supposedly “gentleman’s” game, a game considered the
granddaddy of American baseball. I take an almost over-the-top approach to the
challenges the men face, not least of which are wives who think it’s time the
men grew up and spent more time with their families, as well as Little League
and soccer moms who don’t take too kindly to these strangers in white uniforms,
chattering in myriad languages and with funny accents, who have taken over
their playgrounds — “hijacked,” as they tell it — to play a “foreign” game that
nobody understands, a game that lasts the entire day, freezing out their kids.

As one angry Little League official
demands of Watkins during a confrontational meeting, “You people are in America
now. Why don’t you play an American sport?”

That quote tells you it’s a story about
a clash of cultures, and that something’s gotta give.

What attracted me to the game? Because
it is a national sport in Trinidad, it was natural for me to pick up a cricket
bat when I was old enough to lift it, as natural as an American kid would swing
a baseball bat at that age.

And yes, women do play the game, at all
levels, including international tournaments.

Gilbert:Is the character Watkins
based on you, or someone you knew?

Ewart Rouse: That’s one of the first questions I’m usually
asked. Watkins and the other characters are composites of people I know ­— men who are so
obsessed with the game they are willing to jeopardize their marriages to play
it, and women who have given their husbands an ultimatum: put down that cricket
bat and attend religious services with me on weekends or the marriage is over.

It’s a scenario with which athletes and
spouses in any sport, and readers of any genre, can identify.

Gilbert: Can you explain
to the readers what exactly a “sticky wicket” is?

Ewart Rouse: As I explained on my website — www.ewartrouse.com — the expression is akin to “being in a pickle.” For example,
try explaining to your boss what you were doing at the casino, where you were
spotted, after you had called in sick from work.

In cricket parlance, a
“sticky wicket” refers to the condition of the playing surface of the game — the 66-feet-long by 10-feet wide strip in the middle of the
field. When it is adversely affected by moisture, the surface — called “the wicket” or “pitch” — is likely to cause the bounced ball to behave in an
unpredictable manner. It might pop up, go right, go left, or creep like
a rat toward the batsman.

Even the most talented of batsmen – the ones with the
sharpest of eyes and quickest of reflexes – can be surprised by such a
delivery, end up playing the wrong stroke, and getting out.

The novels’ “sticky wicket” titles refers to “the
pickle” in which protagonist Freddie Watkins finds himself as he battles the
wives and the establishment.

Gilbert: Do you feel
that cricket is becoming more popular in the states as more people learn about
the game and how it’s played?

Ewart Rouse Back
in the mid-1980s, there were seven established clubs in the Philadelphia-South
Jersey area. Today, with the influx of immigrants from cricketing countries,
(New Jersey reportedly is among the most popular destination in the United
States for immigrants from around the world), there are dozens of clubs in
several leagues. Nationwide, there are now hundreds of clubs.

It has remained a largely immigrant sport, but there is a
concerted effort by the United States Cricket Association to get Americans to
take up the sport, just as they have soccer, once considered a “foreign” game.
That effort includes getting schools to follow New York City’s example and make
cricket part of the schools’ sports curriculums.

Gilbert: Can you tell us
about the Lifetime Achievement Award that you received and the proclamation
given to you by the Mayor of Camden.

Ewart Rouse:The South Jersey Caribbean Cultural Organization holds an annual
“heritage day” festival on the Camden waterfront, with lots of music and
vendors selling ethnic foods and things Caribbean. The mayor of Camden issues
proclamations recognizing the day and the recipients of various awards. In
2013, I was presented with a lifetime achievement award in recognition of my
years as a journalist, teacher and my activism on behalf of the cricket
community. It was quite an honor.

Gilbert: You have four
books out in your Sticky Wicket Series. Can we expect a fifth one?

Ewart Rouse: Following the mantra “write what you know,” I’m
going from the cricket field to the newsroom, from humor to thriller. My next
protagonist is a crusading journalist who becomes the story after he loses his
moral compass and becomes involved in a number of potentially career-ending,
headline-grabbing incidents.

Gilbert: What advice
would you give to young people who are curious about trying their hands playing
cricket.

Gilbert:What advice would you
give to young people who are interested in becoming writers?

Ewart Rouse: Take notes about interesting quirky people,
their idiosyncrasies, their pithy quotes and vignettes. They might recognize
themselves in your stories and threaten to do bad things to you if portrayed in
an unflattering light. When that happens, you have your sequel.

Also read anything you get your hands on, from books and newspapers
(before they go the way of the dinosaur) to labels on paint. Each contains
nuggets of information that the mind will retrieve for just the right spot in
your next project. Embellish them, take them to the extreme and, who knows,
maybe you end up with a bestseller. Some might call you a dreamer but, hey, as
the saying goes, you can’t have a dream come through if you don’t have a dream.

Gilbert: Thank you, Ewart Rouse for this
interview. Too those of you out there who are interested in learning more about
the game of Cricket and the men and women who love the game, pick up the Sticky
Wicket Books.The books are now on Kindle check for them here,here, here and here